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21st Century brands are more than the product or the service they sell, even more, than the logo they show; well, if not, they should pretend that if they want to survive in a saturated and competitive market.

Nowadays the value of the brands lies in their intangible qualities: in their values, their talent and their lifestyle spread throughout the world. These transparent brands, honest with their users, conscious about the planet and the context they live with are the ones considered smart brands, also because they advocate for generating value and self-knowledge.

It is in this case that the term smart goes beyond its technological nature. Goes beyond including connectivity and optimization tools into the business ecosystem; in fact, this is out of date because technology is already at the service of human relationships. And the concept of smart brands takes on its full meaning with human relationships.

The thing is that brands deal with relationships. Relationships between users and content and the time they spend interacting with the brand, also how deeply identified they feel with it. And that is why brands must be built up of values being aware of the context and knowing their purpose in this world.

A world that is constantly changing and evolving, by the way, the one we must be able to adapt to. The idea of the big fish eat little fish it is now being replaced by the fast fish eat the slow one, because now in terms of financial strength the difference between the two lies on the adaptive capacity and time.

We are established in the Knowledge Age where the linear evolution concept is out of date, and it’s crucial we understand that the cyclical mindset of feedback is key to find any knowledge to face new challenges.

It is the same in the evolution of any brand. New emerging concepts serve as evidence of this, for instance, the cradle to cradle concept that arises in contrast to the cradle to grave methodology as a life cycle design and management tool not only of biological products but also technological to ensure a high-quality resources flow that feeds future product and services.

In the eternal city, Rome, we had the pleasure of leading the “Cyclical Branding Design Management” workshop with Marc Guitart and Maja Zalaszewska from the brandoma® team in the three venues of the Istituto Europeo di Design in Rome.

The training that Marc Guitart and the brandoma® team delivered during this week was composed of a practical, agile and direct workshop, where the students could understand and feel first-hand successful branding experiences and then proceed with practical cases where the cyclical branding® methodology applied in Design Management, marked the evolutionary phases of all the projects that were carried out. The sessions were focused in the way that students, more than 350 participants from different backgrounds of the design world, could know and develop the cyclical, evolutionary and interdisciplinary mentality that the tomorrow’s companies demand.

We want to thank IED Roma, the opportunity to show future design professionals and entrepreneurs what Design Management is and how this new methodology allows to generate a constant and successful business evolution. Ci vediamo presto Roma!

A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to visit the bazaar of Isfahan in central Iran. Walking in the bazaar was like walking in a maze. The stalls that attracted me to stop by the most were the ones with the colorful hand painted miniatures, hand-crafted plates, colorful spices, and sweets. Displayed nicely in big bags. I could smell a cloud of spice aromas envelope the entire bazaar. Next to the spices and herbs were dried nuts and fruit. Salesmen loudly offered dried pistachios and dried fruit for customers to try. Men and women came to the spices stalls, the shopkeeper scooped up, bagged, and then handed to customers the amazing spice mix.

A few years later, in Sydney, I noticed that the concept of scooping-your-own has become a sustainable way of shopping and has become a retail trend, particularly in wholefood stores and organic supermarkets. The concept of scooping-your-own means that much less food is paid for and wasted. Customers could select varities of spices, create their own blend of spices. This kind of personalised experiences attracts customers and encourages them to come back to the store again and again.

“Have you ever experienced a bazaar or market-place in Middle-Eastern and South Asian cities? “ – I asked my friend as we walked into GewürzhausHerb & Spice Merchants. Located in the Strand Arcade, one of the most iconic Victorian heritage builidngs in the CBD of Sydney, GewürzhausHerb & Spice Merchants is a boutique retail store that offers more than 350 single-origin spices, herbs, salts, peppers, teas, and sugars from around the world.

Gewürzhausmeans ‘spice house’ in German. Sisters Eva and Maria Konecsny from Melbourne are the owners of the shop. The siblings are passionate about cooking and food. Coming from German root, their first store was opened in Carlton, Melbourne in 2001. Each Gewürzhausstore has its own personality through its interior scheme.

The Sydney store was designed by Melbourne-based studio, Doherty Design. It was designed to encourage customers to explore the shop; to smell, touch, and taste the products. Like the experience in a Middle-Eastern bazaar, but not exactly the same. All herbs, spices, salts and tea are self-scooped by customers instead of being served by the shopkeeper. Goods are featured and stored in the tubs instead of being stored in the big bags. Customers are invited to sample the products by lifting the lids of any of the tubs, scooping some of its content, and then seeing and smelling it. Spices and blends in the store were displayed according to cuisine types and country of origin: Australian, South East Asian, Indian and Middle Eastern.

“It was important to maintain that tradition of refined German shopkeeping in both service and aesthetic, and to let the spices and their history speak for themselves,” said the owners of Gewürzhaus.“Doherty Design Studio draws attention to the age and history of the spices through a timeless design, which could be current now or 100 years ago. That is what references our spices’ histories, not the exoticism of their backgrounds” – quoted from blog writing of Tess Ritchie, April 7th2015 Indesignlive.

Engaging all five senses of the customers:

A good interior design provides customer with a spatial perception experience and enables interaction with the products in the store. Customers have five sensory responses as they navigate through a store: sight, smell, touch, taste and sound.

Sight:

Gewürzhaus remindedus of walking into a boutique street store in Europe. The display of the tubs with colorful spices and herbs, however, reminded us of walking through a Middle-Eastern bazaar, and good space planning allowed us to explore the store easily. Every tub of spice in Gewürzhaus was individually labeled, and provided four main types of information: ingredients, origin of product, price and description of use. The visual branding, packaging design, and attractive product display captured customers’ visual attention.

Smell:

Before we entered the shop, the cloud of spice aromas made us want to stop before we went into the shop. Exploring the shop was like exploring a Middle-Eastern bazaar, we opened the lid of the tubs, scooped the spices and herbs, and smelled it. A good scent was generally perceived as positive attraction for the customers to go in or stay longer in the shop. For many of us coming from diverse cultural backgrounds, we explored the scents, and searched for the pieces of our childhood memories by smelling the mixed spices and herbs; it reminded us of the dishes that our grandparents or parents used to cook.

Touch:

The self-scoop format definitely made the shopping experience more engaging and makes customers more likely to buy things. By experiencing scooping the products through interactions, a more personal connection is created. A convenient self-service weighing station was available for customer’s use. Customers could scoop their desired quantity, and put them into specially designed packaging bags.

Taste:

One of the best parts about exploring the shop was that we could sometimes taste some of the spices and herbs. Occasionally the staff in the shop would serve us herbal tea. In the Advent period prior to Christmas, we were served Christmas tea. For some special events, customers are invited to Gewürzhaus’s own cooking school where they would serve the food that are cooked with mixed spices from their store’s products.

Sound:

In the shop, the conversations we overheard from shopkeepers and customers were inevitably about food; how certain spices can blend well with certain meat dishes; how to mix and make an authentic Thai Tom Yum soup; what to sprinkle on top of a cake. The conversations that customers overheard from other people’s discussions can make good impressions on them when shopping for products in the store. Hence, having a passion for cooking and being a food lover are must-have qualities the store looks for when they hire retail sale assitants.

When we explored the in-store experience of Gewürzhaus, we touched on the topic of how customer’s perception responded to the physical environment around them. We observed and explored how humans’ five senses responded to the products and the store circulation. We learnt that human emotion was a key link in the shopping experience.

Customer experience through digital interactive design:

In every purchase that I made in Gewürzhaus, I received their business card that came along with their unique package. On the business card, text in brand’s color, gold, was used to show Gewurzhaus’ s website and social media accounts. Customers shared what they cooked over the week or weekends on their social media by hash-tagging the name of #Gewürzhaus. People found information of Gewürzhaus through their friends’ social media posting, which is a successful way of marketing.

The website was strategically designed in conjunction with the actual products that displayed in the physical retail shops. Instead of going to the physical shops, it gave customers a more flexible option in the ways of shopping. As we navigated the website, we could find detailed descriptions and historical background about the varieties of herbs, spices, salt & pepper, and tea. Like navigating in their physical shops, the website is also designed with good visual design and navigation. However, with online shopping, customers can’t touch, smell and taste the products through the digital shop. Hence, customers either already knew about the products or they purchased based on the information they read from the website.

To enhance customer experience, Gewürzhaus also provided cooking classes, which we could book online. Given that the design of the shop took inspiration from traditional spice markets of exotic locations throughout the world, the cooking classes were also modelled with variety of cooking classes based on different cultural cuisines around the world. If customers could not goto the cooking classes, variety of recipes were also available.

We can take GewürzhausHerb & Spice Merchants as a case study of how customers are engaged both emotionally and behaviorally, of how communication on social media and physical retail stores should both excel in emotional appeal, and of how to encourage various forms of interaction with the brand. Increasingly, success at retail is less about what the retailer has to sell and more about how they sell it. Personalization has also been the latest trend in retail. In this case, customers self-service their own preferred portion of spices, select varieties of spices, create their own blend of spices, and learn more about food cooking through available videos or recipes from websites or cooking classes; these are all part of the personalization trend.

GewürzhausHerb & Spice Merchants showed us a good example of branding strategy by combining their good in-store customer service, as well as with the interactive experience through actual cooking classes and social media platforms; this kind of personalised experiences kept customers coming back to their brand again and again. More importantly, it gave customers the sensation of being in an exotic spice market; and experienced the taste of their own cooking of the exotic cuisines. We didn’t need to travel far to the Middle-East or South Asia, but we could simply use the spices from Gewürzhaus, cook the exotic dishes in our own kitchens in our cozy homes.

We are pleased to announce that we have had the pleasure, once again being able to be in Bogotá and share our vision of branding, under our own methodology of CyclicalBranding.

Last January, Marc Guitart brand consultant and CEO of brandcelona®, on behalf of our team, traveled to the Externado University in Bogotá, to carry out the Design Thinking workshop, where we were able to work together, under a methodology designed for the prospective developmentfor 21st century companies. This allowed us to develop our experience as brand consultants and give our professional approach to a new vision of branding.

The workshop that we did of Design Thinking, we focus on the strategic development of generating brand experiences for professional sectors, who want to enhance their vision to a future market, which evolves every day and poses new challenges, both for brands and for users. It was an enriching day where two great backgrounds, Latin American and European, were presented, providing us with a complete and objective vision of branding in companies.

The mutual work that we did allowed us to contribute a different andinnovative vision to the participants that made this day, a space of professional growth adapted to the new competences of branding in 21st century companies.

Malasaña neighbourhood is living again a splendour moment. An evidence of this is discovering all the streets full of commercial spaces that have managed how to adapt its strategies to the increasingly demands of the XXI century user.

Offering memorable experiencies is a key point nowadays to avoid getting unnoticed and El Paracaidista have fully achieved the objective.

In an ancient neoclassical palace located on La Palma Street we find El Paracaidista, more than 3.000sqm. of innovation for the use and enjoyment of the most demanding users.

A cinema, two floors devoted to exclusive and avant-garde shopping, a cocktail bar, a restaurante and a hub are just some of the surprises that El Paracaidista has for us.

Gourmet products, publishing, beauty, complements, motion , decoration… in the end lifestyle, could not have a better continent than this singular building.

It used to be the Real Candle Factory and it has 5 floors (plus the basement) of more than 500sqm. joined by the skylight of the central courtyard where some metalic and wood elements where kept as originally after the building refurbishing. A pleasure for the senses where continent and content can not leave anyone unmoved.

But there is even more, you can buy limited edition products, capsule collections, and exclusive unpublished design from their app while visiting the store and have them delivered at home: browsing the brick and mortar store, a real improvement that upgrades the shopping experience.

It also has some sponsored meeting spaces where art, culture and design events are welcome. These collaborative brands are linked with the experiences offered by El Paracaidista supporting creative iniciatives.

All this make El Paracaidista a 3.0 Concept Store. A concept that have known how to move further ahead to make today´s shopping experiences memorable.

On one of our brandrid® retail tours, you are given the opportunity to experience and face the upcoming and new markets and trends within retail and brand positioning. A retail tour might be the next step to find inspiration and explore what possibilities your business can achieve, within customers needs, interests and shopping experience in the future.